Easter work

I know it's coming to the end of the Easter holidays and I haven't blogged enough, (but it's been sooo busy) but this is what I have been up to with my college work!

Illustrations
As part of our work for over the Easter break, we had to find and research fashion illustrations that target the visionary target audience, and recreate parts of their work making sure we used a variety of medias! So here is what I've done so far...

Marie O'Connor
I choose to recreate areas of this illustration such as the stitching with the sewing machine and the collage area which included buttons, applique, drawings and embroidery thread.

Richard Gray
I loved this illustration by Richard Gray, straight away I thought of the visionary target audience so I would be stupid not to try and recreate a section of this illustration. Gray uses ink, paints and pencils to create his illustrations, so I tried this technique and here is how it went...

Maren Esdar

This illustration uses collage with the cut and stick technique, the pose of the model drew me to this illustration as it's very visionary and an unusual pose. I have started this illustration but I have found it hard to find and match the correct pieces so I have tried to work around it and get the best match I can (still not finished yet) . 

The 'Biker' shirt dress

Well for this blog post I was going to talk about the progress and finishing touches of my shirt dress... However I had a slight problem last week when I smashed my phone into pieces and lost all the progress pieces!! there fore I don't have the pictures of the making of the collar and collar stand :( on the other stand I got a brand new phone yeyyy and I've been able to capture the final product and I wanted to share it with you guys, so here is my 'biker' look shirt dress (still need to get the rest of the fastening)

John Galliano Fall 2012/13

So as you know i've been researching into Designers, historical and contemporary. Finding what their inspiration, concept, how they have interpreted it into their collections and what creative thinking technique they used to help create their collection.


For one of my Contemporary designers I researched into John Galliano's Fall 2012/13 Collection. I found his concept and inspiration very modern and current. Galliano's  inspiration for his collection was the equestrian culture of  ' aristocratic heiresses.' This to me was very modern and current due to the royal family at the moment always being in the public eye. The concept for his collection was to show hints of riding jackets, capes and thigh knee knit socks to show the equestrian culture. This collection to me was very interesting to see how much of the inspiration and concept was taken into the collection. Here a few of the garments from the collection on the runway in 2012/13... I can clearly see what the inspiration was so hopefully you can to.

The Making stage of the Shirt dress

 The next stage of my 'biker' look shirt dress... I'm actually really enjoying this project as I find it so interesting how all the pattern templates I cut out fit all together and create a garment! I love the process and seeing it all coming together and most of all the final outcome.

 To start with I inserted both the breast dart and the diamond shaped darts on the front and the back.

The next step was to create the button stand, to do this ironed on the interfacing of the two front dress pieces on the wrong side of the material to give it more strength. I then folded over 1cm and pressed it, I then folded over another 3 cm to match up with the notches and pressed it then secured it with a straight stitch, I repeated this on the other front piece.

I then attached the front and the back dress pieces together by the shoulder seams.

 I was then onto creating the sweat heart sleeve, I firstly inserted the piping to go around the bottom of the sleeve. It was a quick and simple process, all I did was fold my chosen material on the bias so it would give it that extra stretch. I then measured the correct length and shape ready to be cut out, I then placed the made piping on one of the right sides of the sleeve and stitched to secure it in place, I then placed to other sleeve on top with right sides together and stitched.These sleeves would be bagged out so I repeated this process four times for each sleeve piece.

 I then attached the sleeves by matching up the two notches for the back and the one notch for the front and stitch with a 1cm seam allowance.

I then simply stitched the sides of the front and back together from the end of the sleeves to the hem.

The Collar

The next stage was the collar and collar stand...

 I started of by stitching right sides together of the collar and bagging it out and ironing to give the sharp edges and points

I then started to attach the collar stand, I matched up the notches with right sides together and stitched one side of the collar stand to one side of the collar with a 1cm seam allowance, I repeated this with the other side. 

This is where i'm up to so far but hopefully I will  be attaching the collar to the dress tomorrow! and also hemming the bottom of the dress. I will also be discussing and sampling out my alternatives of buttons! 

Gareth Pugh

This weekend I have been researching into fashion designers who are just out there and crazy, and in previous briefs I have come across the designer Gareth Pugh but this time I have actually looked further into his work and collection, and I can't help but love his new Fall 2013 Collection, its just magical and so dreamy to watch. With all the lighting and black and white garments against the dark lights with the spot lights, it really is amazing. Take a look it really is out of this world...

Collar and Collar Stand

So what I did first was get out the pattern cutting book, and read the instructions on how to pattern out a collar and collar stand.

I then traced around the collar I had patterned from the book, but I traced round them separately to create the collar and the collar stand. I then closed up the collar and collar stand by 0.2 cm for the collar stand and 0.5 for the collar, this would give the collar that curve to help shape around then neck.

The final step was to trace around the curved collar and collar stand to create the final pattern, then add 1cm allowance around the whole of the patterns except the cut on the fold side. And there we go the collar and collar stand pattern created and it wasn't hard at all.

Giles Deacon Dress, final images

So like I said yesterday, I did get my final images of my Giles Deacon dress photo shoot, so I have the other ones I posted up yesterday but here are a couple more you haven't seen yet! 

oo and I almost forgot, i'm going to upload the images to showstudio.com tonight to enter the compitition.